Maganrord isn't going away, but you might not see much of us over the next week or so. LadyBird and I are moving into our gorgeous new apartment and that's going to take up much of our time and effort in the coming days. Having a new household together is an exciting step for us (we live together now, but our space is small and unsightly) and other priorities, bird blogging included, will be pushed to the back of the queue, if only for a short while.

BourbonHawk, for her part, is encumbered by a rather taxing social schedule.

But we'll all be back before you know it.

Odds, ends:

We've still got a tiercel. Yesterday, I saw him repeatedly but unsuccessfully dive on a smaller bird, probably a starling over the gardens on Officer's Row.

A third dead western gull has turned up on the roof of the new industries building, where our young tiercel stages his bloody adventures. Although these dead gulls are likely the victims of gull on gull violence, I wouldn't mind at all if someone with the authority to do so would go up there and see if the fatal wounds appeared to be gull or falcon inflicted.

We're still watching a certain crow pair on the island. They have a preferred tree and they have been observed defending it.

Speaking of corvids, our ravens may soon receive an awful surprise. The National Park Service may move to destroy their existing stick nests to interrupt reproductive efforts. Ravens will use these nests over and over again from year to year, maintaining and improving them each time around. It's unclear how many nesting seasons these structures have seen but it's probably more than a few.

We know that ravens may be expanding beyond their prehuman range by establishing themselves on Alcatraz, and we have closely reviewed studies showing the degree to which our snowy egret and black crowned night heron colonies face predation by voracious gulls and ravens. Still, we at Maganrord unanimously find that we cannot agree with management policies aimed at thwarting the ravens.

Thanks so much to all of you for reading us, writing us and helping us out with a wealth of knowledge that we've been using to mitigate our obviously amateurish attempts at bird investigation. We'll be back soon!